Why IT Security Policy Templates Fail to Meet Organisational Needs

Many organisations turn to off-the-shelf IT security policy template documents hoping to save time and money to quickly cover IT governance, security, and compliance requirements. While templates appear convenient, relying on them can create more problems than they solve. Here’s why templates are often not enough for effective governance.

Policy Templates Create a False Sense of Readiness

Off-the-shelf IT policy templates rarely reflect how your organisation operates in practice as they are designed for generic scenarios. They cannot account for your unique technology stack and business requirements. Without tailored policies, your organisation remains exposed to risks that off-the-shelf IT policy templates cannot cover.

Templates Often Don’t Reflect Internal Processes

Policies must match how teams actually work. Generic templates frequently describe processes that don’t exist internally. Without modification staff are likely to find policies impractical and potentially ignore them, reducing compliance and creating confusion.

Customising IT Security Policy Templates Can Be Time-Consuming

Most teams underestimate the effort required to adapt a template. Content editing is often required to fit internal structures, get wording right, and reflect an organisations risk approach. Add in the need to secure stakeholder approval and the result is that it takes longer than developing a bespoke policy from the start.

Stakeholder Engagement is Often Overlooked

Templates rarely account for the input required from business units, IT teams, and compliance functions. Without early and ongoing stakeholder engagement, policies can be misaligned with organisational priorities, resulting in unnecessary rework.

IT Security Policy Templates Don’t Map to International Best Practice and Standards

Off-the-shelf IT policy templates are rarely mapped to standards because they are written to be broad and universally applicable. Policies ideally should be mapped to recognised IT best practices and standards relevant to the organisation, such as ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO27017, PCI-DSS, Cyber Essentials and the Cyber Assessment Framework.

Audit and Compliance Challenges

Auditors expect policies to reflect real practices. Off-the-shelf template-based policies often fail this test, describing controls or processes that do not exist. This can result in corrective actions, additional reviews, and potential regulatory risk.

Limited Staff Engagement

Staff follow policies they understand and find relevant. Policy templates often may lack the right context for a user or be overly technical, reducing engagement and increasing errors. Strong governance relies on policies that resonate with employees.

Templates Age Quickly

IT, business and regulatory environments evolve constantly. Off-the-shelf templates do not update automatically, and without an active maintenance plan, they quickly become outdated and ineffective.

Conclusion

Sourcing a bundle of off-the-shelf IT security policy templates may seem convenient, but they rarely meet the needs of real-world organisations. They can take longer than expected to customise, and fail to address unique risks. For effective governance, organisations should make an investment in tailored IT policies that reflect internal processes, risk profile, and regulatory requirements. This approach strengthens staff understanding, improves compliance, whilst enhancing overall IT security maturity and resilience.

A Better Approach: Policy Management as a Service

Instead of relying on generic IT policy templates, many organisations have turned to Policy Management as a Service (PMaaS). PMaaS provides a structured way to create, update, and manage IT policies that align with best practice, standards and your organisation’s real processes.

Policies are tailored to your environment and reflect how your teams actually work. The content is mapped to recognised IT best practice and standards such as ISO 27001, ISO 27002, ISO27017, PCI-DSS, Cyber Essentials and the Cyber Assessment Framework. PMaaS also provides ongoing updates and change request management functions so that  policies stay relevant as organisational needs, threats and regulations evolve.

By using PMaaS, organisations can quickly implement accurate, practical policies while building a sustainable IT security culture.

Get in touch to see how it can work for you.